


Where The Heart Is

by AuditoryCheesecake



Series: A Cheesecake's Tumblr Shorts [24]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adoribull - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Handicrafts, M/M, Melancholy Mage, Not-Quite Fluff, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 07:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8658334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuditoryCheesecake/pseuds/AuditoryCheesecake
Summary: What in the Maker’s name is a home, anyways?





	

Location: an abandoned farmhouse in the southwest corner of the Fereldan Hinterlands. Or, at least, an empty farmhouse.

They rifle through the absent family’s possessions, pocketing coin, leather, daggers, anything that looks useful. Cadash’s Carta days made her thrifty, an unrepentant looter. Dorian just feels like a thief.

He finds a child’s nook in the upstairs loft. A bare straw mattress occupies most of it, and set into the wall above, a shelf with a shrine to the Lady. A rough wooden idol still stands on it, arms spread benevolently, a worn ribbon resting over her shoulders like a shawl. On the floor: a small shoe with a hole in the heel, a wooden dog with a broken leg, and an unfinished embroidery project. Who knew why these things had been left behind. 

His own needle had broken the night before, partway through mending a tear. The child might never return to collect their work. He shouldn’t feel so guilty over taking a needle when there are men dead on the floor downstairs, their blood on the soles of his boots.

 _Home_ , declare letters stitched unevenly in soft pink thread, _is where the heart is._

An exceedingly Fereldan sentiment. Surely he’s spent too long in the South, for it to pull at his chest in such a way.

“What’ve you got there?”

The Iron Bull hunches over to fit in the small space, incongruent in the farmhouse. Blood-flecked leather, lace curtains. Silver scars, tarnished candlesticks. Dawnstone ax on his back, wooden statue of Andraste on a shelf. War, children. Pariah, Tal Vashoth. 

Who can fit in a house like this after being the sort of men that they are? Who can go from demons to domesticity?

What in the Maker’s name is a home, anyways?

Houses burn, orphanages burn. People bleed: friends, malifecarum, twisted husks of templars. Hearts stop.

He hands the embroidery hoop with its sagging linen and crooked stitches across the space between them.

“I wonder,” he says, and brushes dust away from the Lady’s soft face. The Lady of Sorrow on a forgotten shelf in Ferelden. “I wonder if she will ever return.”

“Andraste? Or the kid who stitched this?” A shifting behind him. Cloth, ax, blood, heart.

“Either, come to think of it.”

“Couldn’t say. One’s dead and burned for sure.”

“And the other lost.”

Where would a child go when the sky dropped demons? With her parents, one might hope– and yet. A desperate father is no protection.

“Where the heart is.” The wooden frame is so small in his hands. A fleeting thought: the Iron Bull, embroidering. Strange, in its very lack of strangeness. Why wouldn’t he?

“So it would seem. I rather hope it’s still in her chest.”

The Iron Bull’s laughter does not fit in the loft. It spreads, like water, from him into the air. 

“I should hang this in my room,” he says.

“Whatever for?”

“Help me remember the bigger picture. What’s important.”

“Is that not finding new and exciting ways to kill dragons?” His favorite robes will never be the same. Their roles briefly reversed: Dorian sparking lightning, challenging her dominion, threatening her children. The Iron Bull, striking the unexpected blow into her heart. Chipped scales, singed fabric. A mighty enemy, dispatched with great respect.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves now.”

“No, I understand.” He does, at least partially. With the Iron Bull, there are always other subtleties to uncover later. “The little people, as Sera says.”

“Yeah. Or maybe I just like the sentiment. And the color of the thread.” 

What other man is like the Iron Bull? There cannot be another.

“Where the heart is,” Bull says, and grins at Dorian like they’re sharing a secret.

“I rather think that home is Antivan wine, Tevinter chocolates, Rivaini silk sheets, and a–” greedy fool of a ‘Vint, don’t say _that_ , “and good books of every nationality.”

“I think you’re right, Kadan.” His smile shifts on his face, smoke in sunlight. “That sounds pretty damn nice.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi [on Tumblr!](http://acheesecakewrites.tumblr.com/) <3


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